This review might contain light spoilers for the story of Slam Dunk.

The first thing I'd like to talk about is how Slam Dunk changed Japanese culture. The author of this piece, Takehiko Inoue, started playing basketball in high school just to impress the girls but eventually fell in love with the sport and made a manga about it, that was Slam Dunk. Many people didn't know how to play basketball but with the airing of Slam Dunk it eventually became popular because our main character, Sakuragi Hanamichi, is a newbie at the game too and has no idea how to play, so the viewers could watch and learn along with him.

In the beginning Sakuragi starts playing basketball just to impress a girl he likes, like the author himself, but falls in love with the sport itself and truly tries to get better and play as best as he can. This may shock you but Sakuragi isn't talented at all, all he has is his physique but he has no idea how to play the game and has to learn how to play from the beginning just like everybody else.

I want to point out how this isn't your average sport anime where main characters have superpowers and stuff, Slam Dunk is actually realistic and quite dark in some moments. I'll take two characters as an example, Kaede Rukawa and Akira Sendoh, they're both equally skilled but the world knows one of their names and has no idea who the other one is just because one of their teams won one more game than the other.

This anime makes maximum use of its characters, even some characters that don't play basketball can be important in some moments. I'll use Sakuragi's friend group as an example, they're a bunch of punks but they make sure that Sakuragi doesn't become a punk yet again because he finally found something he likes to do and they don't want to ruin it for him.

SPOILERS

For the end I'd like to talk about a character called Mitsui Hisashi. He is the character that was extremely talented but due to a stupid decision he got injured and couldn't play for a year, in that year he lost a lot of his stamina and couldn't endure playing a whole game. His story is extremely sad when you watch the anime for yourself but he is a proof that in life you don't get second chances, he just had the chance to finish high school with some good memories for the end.

Thank you for reading.